"Yeah?" he grunted into the phone. The call startled him out of a deep and dreamless sleep, and he hadn't even looked to see who was calling him, reacting instead on instinct. The small clock beside his bed told him it was just after 2:00 in the morning.

"El?" a small voice answered, and for one mad moment he thought it was Kathy. However bad things had gotten between them - which was, actually, pretty damn bad - they were still raising children together, and she called him, sometimes. Never at 2:00 a.m., though. Never sounded that scared, either. At least, not anymore. Not since the divorce.

It wasn't Kathy calling, though. As the fog of sleep cleared his sense returned to him, and he realized he knew that voice. Knew it better than anyone's, maybe. Anyone but Kathy.

"Liv?" he asked, alarmed. She was supposed to be tucked up in her bed safe somewhere upstate. There was no reason he could think of for her to be calling him this late. No good reason, at least. Whatever had her picking up the phone, it had to be bad.

"You were sleeping," she said. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have bothered you. I should - "

"You should tell me what's going on," he cut across her. It might have been years since he left her, years since he'd last seen her face, but he knew her, and he knew her voice, and he could tell just from the sound of her that she'd been crying, maybe still was, just trying not to let it show. Liv never did like to let anyone see her cry.

"It's stupid," she murmured.

Olivia Benson was a lot of things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

"You can talk to me, Liv," he urged her. "Whatever's going on, it's bad enough to make you want to call me. I'm up now. I'm listening. You can tell me."

"I had a bad dream," she confessed, and inwardly he breathed a sigh of relief. After five kids and nearly forty years of being a parent, Elliot knew how to ward off the shadow a nightmare.

"You wanna tell me about it?"

On the other end of the phone she sighed; he heard a faint rustling sound, the phone shifting in her grip while she ran her fingers through her hair. While he waited for her to find the courage to tell him the rest he pulled himself upright, sat up straight with his back against the headboard, closed his eyes and listened to the reassuring sound of her breathing.

"There's not much to tell," she said. "I couldn't see anything. I mean I could, I guess, but it wasn't anything I understood. People's faces, but I don't know who they are. A gun. There was something shiny on the bottom of it."

Olivia had been with SVU for a long, long time; she'd seen more than her fair share of guns, more than her fair share of horror. Elliot wanted to ask her about the faces; Elliot wondered if he'd remember them. It was thirteen years he and Liv had spent together, and in that time they'd met countless victims, countless villains. But he'd been gone a long time, too, and there was no telling if what Liv was remembering now had happened before or after his departure. The topic of him abandoning her wasn't one he wanted to get into tonight, so he didn't press the issue.

"But it scared you? This dream."

"Yeah. Not the faces, so much. I just…I was in so much pain, Elliot. I think…I've got these awful scars, all over me. I think I was dreaming about how I got them."

All over me.

Something small and frightened began to scream down deep in his chest. What the fuck did that mean, she had scars all over her? The whole time they'd been together, the worst scrape she ever got in was Gitano and that fucking knife, and that didn't even need stitches. No one had left a mark on her while Elliot was with her, at least not a permanent one. Not a physical one. Emotional scars, there were plenty of those, but nothing he had seen would account for the scars she described.

"And I just…I want to know what happened to me. I want to know who did this to me. I want to know what he did. And I thought…I thought you'd know. I thought you could help me."

Christ.

He wanted to help her, of course he did. He wanted, desperately, to help her. To give her back her voice, her story, her truth, to help her find her way back to herself, to bring her peace, send her off to quiet, pleasant dreams instead of whatever horror haunted her tonight, but what she needed now was something he could not give her. The questions plaguing her were not questions he could answer, because he didn't fucking know.

What the hell happened to her? He'd wondered about it more than once, over the years. Thought about her damn near every day. Wondered who was walking beside her now, wondering if that man was looking after her the way he was supposed to, the way Elliot would've, if only he'd been there. Wondered if she was safe, if she was happy. Tried to convince himself that he'd done the right thing by her, falling on his sword to save her career, cutting himself loose from her so that she could make her own way in the world. It used to comfort him, the thought that she was better off without him, that without him there to hold her back she'd spread her wings and fly.

But what she was telling him now did not paint their years apart in a rosy light. Sure, she'd gotten married, had a baby, built a family like she always wanted, but someone had hurt her, hurt her bad - it had to be bad, didn't it, if it left scars all over her? - and now Elliot knew the truth. The truth was that him leaving didn't save her. He hadn't been there to protect her, and she'd paid the price with her own body.

"El?"

"I'm sorry," he croaked. "I'm sorry, Liv. I don't…I don't know what happened."

"Oh."

Such a small word. A simple word. A word full of such earth-shattering disappointment it made him want to put his own fist through a wall, break every bone in his hand just to punish himself for the crime of having abandoned her.

"It's - it's been a few years since we worked together," he said, trying to explain in a way that wouldn't cause her more grief. "We didn't talk a lot, after I left. Whatever happened, it must've been more recent. You never got hurt that bad while we were partners."

"Because you were there to protect me?" she asked. It sounded like she genuinely wanted to know. If she had him to thank for thirteen years of not getting shot, thirteen years with no real scars to show for it. None that were visible, anyway. Part of him wanted to say yes. Yes, he was the reason she'd gone so long not having her body torn open by the nightmares they chased. Wanted to take credit for it. He knew better, though.

"Mostly it was just luck," he said instead. "Look, you - you're tough as nails, Liv. You can hold your own in a fight and you're good with a gun. You went a long time not getting hurt because you were smart, and because you were lucky. You gotta be both to survive in that job."

"Guess my luck ran out," she muttered. "You should see - no, you probably shouldn't, actually. It's so…these scars are so ugly, El. Whatever happened to me, I think that was ugly, too."

"Fin'll know," Elliot said, half to himself. "He was still with you while I was gone." And wasn't that just so fucking funny, he thought, that Elliot himself had left Olivia before Fin did? What were the odds of that?

"I'll ask him," she sighed. "He's coming back tomorrow."

Tomorrow wouldn't help her tonight, though. Tonight she needed something to set her mind at ease, something to help her put aside the thoughts of her scars and her dreams, something gentler to focus herself on. But what the fuck was Elliot supposed to say? I'm sorry I abandoned you the way everybody always does. I'm sorry I wasn't there when you were hurt. Probably never would've happened if I'd had the balls to stay. I'd have beat him for you. I'd have killed him myself. Not exactly comforting words.

"Why didn't we talk much?" Olivia asked him before he could come up with something more pleasant to say. "After you left. We were friends. Why didn't we talk?"

"Uh."

Because you wanted to kill me. Because I knew if I heard your voice I'd be right back at my post and I'd die there. Because I was worried that if I saw your face even one more time I'd throw my marriage away for you. Because I'm pretty sure I should've.

"Everything was kind of a mess," he said uneasily. I killed a kid the same age as my own daughter, right there in the middle of the bullpen, because she pointed a gun at you. "Some…bad stuff happened, and I had to leave, and I knew you wanted me to stay. But I couldn't. I…I hurt your feelings."

What a massive goddamn understatement that was. He hadn't hurt her feelings, he'd shattered her entire world, and he knew it. Elliot had a mother and brothers and sisters and five kids and a wife, old friends from the service and a resume that listed jobs other than just the NYPD, and Liv had exactly fuck all. Liv had him. Liv had the job, and the squad, and him, and when he left he hadn't just taken himself away from her, he'd tainted everything he left behind. Ripped open every old wound that had ever been etched on her heart, every memory of every person who'd ever left her behind, validated the scared voice in the back of her mind telling her that no one would ever love her and stay. He'd done that, and he knew it, and that was why she was so fucking pissed at him. Even if she didn't remember that now, he did, and always would.

"But you did ok, after I went," he carried on. "You've got your husband, you've got your boy, you've got this nice retirement."

And how the fuck did that happen, anyway? He always figured if Liv didn't die in a shootout on the street she'd die at her desk; he'd always thought they'd have to pry her out of SVU with a crowbar. He'd never imagined that she would leave on her own. So why did she? What made her decide to leave the only life she'd ever known, the only life she'd ever really wanted?

The boy, he thought. Her son. If anything could've convinced Olivia to give up the job, taking care of her own child would've been the thing that did it.

"My husband is dead," Liv said heavily. "And my son…how is he ever going to learn anything about where he came from if I can't even remember his father?"

Jesus, this just kept getting worse and worse. Her husband was dead? How the fuck had that happened? How many losses could one woman take?

"It's going to get better," he said forcefully, not necessarily because it was true but because he needed it to be. "It won't be like this forever."

"I wish I could see your face," she breathed. It sounded like she was crying again. "I feel…I feel so lonely, El. I don't even know myself."

"Tell me where you are," he said, climbing out of bed, looking around for his shoes. So what if it was 2:00 in the morning? He was divorced, he lived alone, he was off work for the next few days, and Olivia needed him. "I'll come right now, I'll - "

"I don't know where I am!" she hissed, her voice low like she wanted to shout but didn't want to wake her baby. "I don't know where this town is, I don't know the street - "

"I'll find you," he told her. Elliot had only been back on the job six months, but he knew people. If Fin wouldn't pick up when Elliot called, Jet could probably get Olivia's information from the driver's license database.

"I promise, Olivia," he said fiercely. "Wherever you are, I'll find you. I'm coming. I'm coming for you."

"Elliot -"

"You're not alone. I'm gonna hang up, and I'm gonna make some phone calls, and then I'm gonna find you, ok? I'll be there before you know it."

Fin said she was somewhere upstate; maybe Elliot could make it there before the sun came up.

"Thank you," she breathed. "Thank you."

"Just hold on," he told her. "I'm coming."